BLABBERMOUTH.NET
Swedish post-punk multi-instrumentalist songwriter
Henrik Palm, who was a member of
GHOST from 2015 until 2016, has inked a deal with
Svart Records.
Svart will release
Palm's new album,
"Poverty Metal", in the fall, along with a reissue of his critically acclaimed debut LP,
"Many Days".
From his work with an almost limitless multitude of acts such as
IN SOLITUDE's renewal of heavy metal, darlings of the underrated underground
PIG EYES, his stint in
GHOST, prog rock grandmasters
GÖSTA BERLINGS SAGA, punk veterans
ISOTOPE SOAP and experimental weirdos
SÖDRA SVERIGE,
Palm is a post-punk, heavy-pop sonic contortionist of the finest order. From being hand-picked for
Tomas Lindberg's (
AT THE GATES) curated
Roadburn festival performance to opening for acts like
VOIVOD and winning the hearts of well-known fans such as
Jacob Bannon (
CONVERGE) and
Scott Carlson (
REPULSION),
Palm has been blowing all of us away for good a while now. Everything we're looking for in a fresh and modern genre clash,
Henrik's music is catchy, well-crafted, beautiful and ugly in the same intense and challenging moment. Impossible to define,
Palm is a perfect reflection of his eclectic tastes and infamously insatiable vinyl collection, fitting
Svart's groundbreaking roster perfectly.
Tomi Pulkki from
Svart says: "What
Henrik Palm creates with his songs of diverse influence is a rare explosion of outlandish and captivating rock that we're really excited to present to a wider world. It's not often that an artist can have us dancing to
VOIVOD-ian discordant riffs and prog excursions with that Swedish knack for a well-crafted song. We're getting ready to administer
'Poverty Metal' to the masses."
Palm moves freely between record collections and worlds. Between
KILLING JOKE,
CRASS and
PSYCHIC TV, but also between
HP Lovecraft and
Dr. Who.
Decibel dubs his sound as "raw rock and roll with a punk edge and a profound sense of weirdness," and his undiscovered terrain lies between the deeply private and the anarchist spiritual, intertwining cronky, angular postcore riffs with kraut and shoegaze influences. The songs lie in the room like a ghost, heavy breathing.
Henrik says: "I love to experiment with weird instruments, tunings and anything that makes the song better, creepier, more beautiful or whatever. Fuck genres. Identity and feeling is more important," and his music is a wildly fresh distortion of conventions.
According to
Palm, seventy percent of his musical diet consists of raw punk with some
TROUBLE,
CELTIC FROST,
THROBBING GRISTLE and
MY BLOODY VALENTINE to round things out.
Palm is one of four former members of
GHOST who filed a lawsuit against the band's founder and main songwriter,
Tobias Forge, in 2017. The four musicians accused the vocalist, who performs under the stage names
Papa Emeritus and
Cardinal Copia, of cheating them out of their rightful share of the profits from the band's album releases and world tours.
In a statement explaining the lawsuit, the ex-members officially revealed their identities as
Palm (
Eather),
Simon Söderberg (
Alpha; member of
GHOST from 2010 until 2016),
Mauro Rubino (
Air; member of
GHOST from 2011 until 2016) and
Martin Hjertstedt (
Earth; member of
GHOST from 2014 until 2016).
The Swedish-based act underwent a complete overhaul at the end of 2016, when
Forge fired the entire lineup and recruited new players.
Forge — who does all the band's interviews as a Nameless Ghoul — has said that
GHOST has always been essentially a one-man project, with many session musicians coming and going over its 12-year existence.